The Little Ice Age was bad. Similar global cooling now will be harsh. Hopefully earth won’t significantly cool, but we have more reason to prepare for cooling than warming. A little warming is a good thing. A little cooling will cause famine and worse.

From the article, and this is my point:

Witch Hunts
In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII recognized the existence of witches and echoed popular sentiment by blaming them for the cold temperatures and resulting misfortunes plaguing Europe. His declaration ushered in an era of hysteria, accusations and executions on both sides of the Atlantic. Historians have shown that surges in European witch trials coincided with some of the Little Ice Age’s most bitter phases during the 16th and 17th centuries.

I consider it exaggerated to blame that pope for ushering in an era of hysteria, but the official papal declaration did lend credence to the noble-cause-corruption evident. Of course, the Pope held responsibility for the Inquisition in his day.

I doubt I’m the only one with misgivings regarding the Pope’s recent stances on environmentalism, socialism, and a few other ominous topics, especially his assertion implying Trump cannot be Christian (and by association and extension, all who support wall-building).

Similarities between now and more than a few grave moments in history are striking.

Let us not lose sight of what is right. Do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Too many lives were sacrificed in learning those lessons and overcoming the mistakes.

I offer here a hodgepodge of thoughts provoked by the author, Caleb Shaw.

For context, read the article, quoting:

“It continued long after the Boston Tea Party sparked a Revolutionary War, where the good idea of Liberty cost the young nation 1% of its population. A half-century later Oliver Wendell Holmes demanded doctors wash their hands (a decade before Louis Pasteur got the credit for discovering germs), and inadvertently this caused a crisis in the Church at a time when New England was the “Bible Belt,” (because germs were an invisible power other than God.) Not long after that other redefiners pushed the radical idea that slavery should be abolished in all places, which rather than mere paper legislation inadvertently led to the horrible slaughter of the Civil War, which cost nearly as many American lives as all the nation’s other wars combined.”

Along with the author’s point, I’m emphasizing the lack of vision in those who saw germs as an affront to God’s supremacy. How small minded can people be? If you think like this, I assure you, your God is too small. (Reference JB Phillips.)

Also, “redefinition is no laughing matter, and nothing to take lightly. You can’t blithely reform things like the Ten Commandments or the American Constitution, without facing reverberations of a magnitude that is far from blithe.”

Also, “When we experience loss we replay it in our minds. The psychologists may call it “Post Traumatic Stress”, but we are replaying the films of the past game, noting the mistakes, and planning to play better in the next game. We own a craving to improve.” And that is good, if we have our foundation firmly grounded in something greater than ourselves, and if we keep proper perspective and proportion.

Also, “politics does involve winners and losers, and a rule book called our laws, and the temptation to “amend” the laws, and to “redefine” how the game is played, and even what constitutes “winning”. It requires we be civil, if we are to call ourselves “civilized”, and that we follow certain set procedures we call “civil procedures”. And here again we see two basic types of laws that restrain man within certain limits: Physical laws and spiritual laws.”

I believe in these laws, and I am convinced we cannot attain the good of them by ignoring that which is inconvenient within them. There aren’t any politicians in the limelight today that I think are trying to account the full perspective of such law. The foremost of the conservatives seems willing to compromise anything for the sake of political expedience. He says one thing, and many repeat what he says, but does another. Perhaps that will get us by, perhaps it will buy us time, but it will fix nothing.

Feynman taught us the truth that we are easy to fool, but nature will not be fooled. So, we must try hard not to fool ourselves. We still have a problem, though, because of how shortsighted we humans are, especially en masse.

Caleb Shaw goes on to relate a personal anecdote about a shortsighted friend who didn’t listen to her plumber. But this friend of his learned. It may have cost her monetarily, but she could afford the lesson with respect to time and life. Hopefully she learned well and became wiser for her future. With many things, nature is too forgiving, too long suffering. Nature will not be fooled, but she is never in a hurry. Mostly, she just doesn’t care. Nature operates by laws, and to our detriment, those laws often allow for extremes in human suffering, suffering we humans caused, and could have prevented, had we just not been so shortsighted.

“The physical laws are easier to deal with, because they are more obvious, though not always clear to a layman. […] Physical laws represent Truths that will not be mocked.”

Sadly, nature often affords us far too much time to dig our own graves, as it were.

The global warming alarmists assert that we are being shortsighted by continuing to burn fuel to keep ourselves alive, but they ignore history, and they especially ignore prehistory as revealed to us by the palaeosciences. The facts in evidence show clearly it is shortsightedness that leads to alarmism. Shortsightedness has always lead to alarmism. It is so again. In this case, the evidence available shows that it has been warmer in the past, much warmer, many times. The available evidence shows clearly that cold kills and warmer is better. The earth clearly is an equilibrium machine, and with all the water, it has lots to work with. The nature of the universe is to alleviate imbalance. Emergent phenomenon self-organize to increase the efficiency of dissipation. Complex dissipative systems arise, grow, and grow more complex to alleviate imbalance more efficiently. If energy in the global system increases, the global system doesn’t warm appreciably, it just runs faster and grows more complex. It grows more complex with living systems, communities, and entire ecosystems, and it grows more complex in its weather and transport systems in atmosphere and ocean. These factors attain from extra energy and from extra resources, such as carbon dioxide that allows plants to flourish and use water and nutrients more efficiently. It matters not how the extra becomes available. Nature simply uses it to more efficiently dissipating differences and imbalances. Nature doesn’t care. Nature just works, and it has worked to keep earth’s climate quite constant for as far in the past as we can tell. As well as we can tell, for over two billion years, the approximate average temperature of the planet in absolute terms has been 290±8 Kelvin. That is constant within less than 3%. Reference http://scotese.com/climate.htm. Note that he currently draws the graph well into the future. Note where he marks “today.” I like to emphasize this quote, “During the last 2 billion years the Earth’s climate has alternated between a frigid “Ice House”, like today’s world, and a steaming “Hot House”, like the world of the dinosaurs.” I like to also point out that most of the time in the past it was hot-house. Life has always prospered during the warm periods. You will notice a spike in temperature in the Tertiary. It was in the Tertiary, near this hot time, that primates first evolved. Also, the ungulates. Obviously, we primates, and our tasty grass-eating co-inhabitants love warmer climate, much warmer, relatively speaking, plants too, and they especially like more carbon dioxide. Regarding temperature stability, bringing things even closer to home, note that for the last several centuries temperature has varied only about 1%, and for the last century, including through today, it has varied no more than about 0.1%. That is better than the air conditioning system in your insulated house. Don’t you think our water-covered planet is regulating itself with weather and circulation systems? Such a regulating system would necessarily run faster with more energy available. It would necessarily increase in complexity and efficiency, and that is why there is so much evidence of such stability.

Caleb continues, “Spiritual laws are harder to deal with, because they often run counter to more selfish laws that politicians deal with, that are tantamount to a sort of Law Of The Jungle. For example, a politician needs to curry favor among constituents, and this sometimes tempts them to hand out money and jobs inappropriately, with the money diverted from the people and the job it was earmarked for. In the case of the levees of New Orleans, very little of the money Washington sent to improve the levees was actually spent on the levees, while a lot went to various sorts of “inspectors”, and to lawyers involved in endless environmental lawsuits. The result of this was that, when Katrina arrived, the levees were not ready to hold back the flood. It did not matter that the Law Of The Jungle had been obeyed, when The Law Of Nature arrived.”

It is internal, spiritual even, what drives politicians, and therefore, politics. Greed and lust for power often override our better angels. Eventually, though, truth wins out. Nature, be it physical or human, will not be fooled long enough to get away with disregarding truth. Our sins will out. We do reap what we sow. Sure, there are those con artists that get away with it, but others pay the price, especially those close to them. It is a sad legacy. In truth, it is a sad life. It is only delusion that lets an evil man justify that he is simply winning. Truth will not be mocked.

Regarding many things in politics and government, especially with regard to education, I assert that it is not about the money. That is, more money will not fix the problems. (For that matter, less money will not fix the problem on its own either.) Mr. Shaw adds, “Politicians always claim they need more money, but money is useless if corruption misappropriates it.” Is that a truism? Regardless, it is obviously true. Corruption exists in all power structures, because power corrupts. (If you deny that, you need to step into the real world and shun your fantasies.) The US education system has lost sight of the point of education. The US education system from the local school, through the board, through the district, and State, and Fed, is only about power and control. It is especially true of the unions. A union, by definition, pits the unionized against the “boss.” There is no getting around the fact that the boss of the school is ultimately the parents. All of the machinery of the school system from the classroom teacher through the superintendents, including State Superintendents, align against the parents, and thereby, the students that they claim to try to serve. That is an inherent opposition that cannot work. It is a fundamental, unavoidable conflict of interest. It is fundamentally a conflict, a coercive tool of the educational system against the very customers it pretends to serve.

Coercion is evil.

Compulsory educational attendance laws are fundamentally coercive.

Coercion is evil.

The government education system is founded on evil. It cannot thrive.

We are not Borg. Resistance is far from futile. Resistance does actually succeed most of the time.

Referring to Boston’s Big Dig, failed bureaucratic weapons for the military, bad bridges, and other government-sponsored engineering and science, Caleb correctly observes, “The sad fact of the matter is that we are likely to see more of these costly mistakes, not fewer, as long as we allow the political Law Of The Jungle to rule science and engineering. The sooner we erect some sort of barrier between politics and science the better off we will be.”

I agree.

I point to separation of church and state. The churches, indeed, all religions, in the United States have flourished since the founding primarily because the government leaves them alone. It is only in recent decades with meddling from secular wimps that problems have arisen. Yet, even in the repressive government climate of today, there are many communities among us with churches practically on every corner, including multiple Christian and non-Christian religions.

Where would we be with science if government had the same hands-off restrictions with research and laboratories as with religion? Of course, the paranoid raise the alarm. They imagine atrocities and insist on government regulation. Well, frankly, many do the same with religion, especially certain sects regarded as dangerous. If not for our longstanding laws and traditions, the world would be the worse, unimaginably worse, and no man would be allowed to express freedom of religion.

The same separation should be applied to education and state.

Consider: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or education or scientific research, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This rule has been the soil within which the roots of liberty and self-determination have flourished. Should we not expand the scope of this rule, this requirement, to such obviously bedeviled essentials of society? Government has disrupted and corrupted so many fundamental goods in our lives. We must restrict government from our educational and scientific institutions.

My proposal will not eliminate abuses and failures, but it will rid us of the institutions that perpetuate failure and prohibit accountability.

Caleb Shaw makes many good points in the article at WUWT. I thank him and Anthony for hosting it.

The rule of thumb regarding questions in headlines is that the answers must be assumed to be “no.”

So, is the Pope worried about prosperity? I’d say probably, but not in the general sense as asked in the question. The Pope may be getting such bad advice, and so much of it, that he thinks our current prosperity is only increasing as a bubble, and the crash is coming, and it will be worse than the dark ages.

Given the long view the church must take, I understand, but if the leadership of the church is trying to mitigate against loss of adherents, it has lost sight of the reason for the churches existence. Besides, Jesus himself declared He would build the church and hell would not prevail against it.

Anything that increases energy costs and food costs, including converting corn to motor-fuel is immoral, sinful, harmful to people, especially the poorest of us.

I assert boldly that burning edible food for fuel is sin. It is immoral. I will go so far as to say it is a crime against humanity. It increases the cost of energy, increases the cost of food, and reduces the availability of food. What could be more harmful to the poorest two-thirds of our population?

The fact is that actions taken in the name of saving the global climate, and actions taken in the coerced (referring to subsidies funded by taxes) support of alternative energy sources, are causing measurable harm today, right now.

No harm done today can ever be construed to justify a possible lessening of harm in some distant future.

We will do what we must.

Today, for our generation, for our children and grandchildren today, we should do all we can to improve all proven energy sources, especially nuclear, but also coal, oil, and natural gas. We have a moral imperative to increase availability of fuel and power production and to decrease the cost by all means of efficiency gains and economy of scale.

More energy, not less. That will accomplish the Pope’s stated goal of assisting the poorest of us.

Why is Pope Francis writing about climate change? Because he cares for the poor, and wants us all to look at how we use the resources of the world. His objective is to ask each of us to look at how we use the resources available to us, and how to be good stewards of creation. Whether we consider ourselves as owners or tenants of this planet we are asked to use it’s bounty to the good of all, and to avoid laying it waste to the detriment of our brothers and sisters.

He looks at a number of ways in which the poor more than most suffer from environmental damage that man has control over. The first thing he mentions (paragraph 20) is something well aired on these blogs: atmospheric pollutants affecting the poor, using as…

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Willis’ article is well presented and insightful. The comments, particularly those of RGB, are quite valuable. Some of the comments are good examples of what not to do. Some are educational and valuable.

Willis and RGB contribute greatly to WUWT, and they are among the greatest minds of our time. If you research the site, with the built-in search or your favorite search engine, you will find a wealth of knowledge and insight.

You will understand the global climate better if you read this article and the comments. The time spent reading will prove worthwhile.

While RGB points out that CO2 physically acts to increase global average surface temperature, Willis shows (in this and prior articles) that CO2 is not the only factor, and as RGB points out, more heat doesn’t necessarily mean hotter; it can instead mean faster, or slightly larger dissipative emergent phenomena.

Carbon dioxide is an essential ingredient in life. We must have it, and it has been deficient in the environment throughout human existence. It is likely still deficient. CO2 is no more a pollutant than O2 and H2O. Oxygen is a killer. Water, even more so. We humans suffer more expense and direct tragedy already, directly due to these other two essential ingredients of life than any plausible scenario associated with CO2.

We will burn all of the fossil fuels unless a genius breakthrough occurs. We will run out of all of it before CO2 even begins to become a true concern to the well being of humans and the biosphere.

Mostly, I agree with RGB (and Willis routinely expresses full solidarity with this sentiment) when he says that climate related policies, and even the vast sums spent on climate research are harmful to the least among us. The Pope wants us to respect the poor. That starts not with only small kindnesses, but with cheap energy by every means available.

RGB is correct when he says:
“At heart, all poverty is energy poverty. The units of energy are the units of work, and work, one way or another, is wealth.”

I got to thinking about how I could gain more understanding of the daily air temperature cycles in the tropics. I decided to look at what happens when the early morning (midnight to 5:00 AM) of a given day is cooler than usual, versus what happens when the early morning is warmer than usual. So what was I expecting to find?

Well, my hypothesis is that due to the emergence of clouds and thunderstorms, when the morning is cooler than usual, there will be less clouds and thunderstorms. As a result the day will tend to warm up, and by the following midnight it will end up warmer than where it started. And when the morning is warmer than usual, increased clouds and thunderstorms will cool the day down, and by the following midnight it will end up cooler than when it started. In other…

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March started out slow, real slow. That was good. Today, beautiful, until late afternoon. Then severe storms fired up north east of OKC. Then things settled down. Then BOOM. 70+ mph winds, hail, tornadoes.

It almost seemed like we just didn’t quite have enough energy in the system to get it going. But it found the energy, and it seemed to have a lot of momentum once it started. Fast moving, fast developing, and the bigger one went through Moore, Oklahoma again.

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Carbon dioxide is an essential ingredient of life. It is not pollution any more than oxygen or water, both of which are far more dangerous. Both oxygen and water contribute directly to billions of dollars in damages, both slow and sudden, and thousands of deaths every year.

Trying to control carbon dioxide means trying to control your breathing. Taxing carbon is half-a-step from taxing your very breath. Those who pretend we need to stop producing carbon prove their hypocrisy with every breath they continue to breath.

He is correct. We must reestablish the validity of science. It has become a radicalized, fundamentalist religion. They will be burning us at the stake soon, they already joke and write about it.

By the way, the industrial revolution and the inexpensive energy we have is what ended slavery. Fighting coal and forcing energy costs up will very likely bring back slavery, as slave labor is the only option for the hyperwealthy when the machines have no power, or when that power costs more than keeping slaves. The environmentalists want to put us all in chains as slaves, literally.

I really am not pleased with it overall. They had such an opportunity.

I record my exasperation. I really think it ought to be possible to sue Neil and company for such gross negligence. Of course, who am I, a lowly engineer, to question such a preeminent physicist? Well, I’m the same guy that is willing to question the Pope (though I usually find myself agreeing with him), the President (and it has been decades since I’ve agreed with one of them), and even the local pastor. I question all authority. I try to question myself and my own biases.

The global warming episode is utterly emotional and fact-free. A stereotypical Jewish mother has nothing on Neil when it comes to guilt trips. I guess he wants everyone, especially the children, to feel guilt and shame that they are not doing their part and suffering now so that the future generations can have something in the distant future.

How many episodes of Cosmos so far? I don’t care. Only one good episode, last week. This week sucked bad.

Overall, I love what they are doing, but they are such bullies and so arbitrary!

Alarmism is alarmism whether delivered by a fire-and-brimstone preacher, or a snake-oil salesman, or by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yes, I’m comparing the three together, equating them. Neil is simply acting to scare people when he ridicules religion or tries to scare us into killing each other in order to stop burning fuel. Yes, the greens, the climate alarmists, the “Agent Smiths” of the world are calling for mass murder when they call for the ending of the fossil fuel era. Neil is simply lying when he pretends solar power can run our industrial, technological world. Part of why we were able to end the heinous crime, the sin, of slavery, is because of the inexpensive availability of fossil fuel and our innovation abilities to turn chemical energy into mechanical energy and production.

The alarmists and greens claim they are calling for the greater good but what will result, if they get what they want, is tyranny, murder, and slavery.

Learn. Study. Seek truth. ALWAYS question authority.

When it comes to Cosmos, be as smart as an old cow; eat the hay, and spit out the sticks. Many aspects of each show are good, but some of it is rotten. Throw it out.

Boy, this is ugly, and I hope this boils down to simply an error in judgement by a lower tier administrator because this is like some bizzaro-world episode; on one hand the Anti-Defamation League is coming down against the “…type of comparison diminishes and trivializes the Holocaust.“, while on another they are giving a “get out of jail free card” to the people who have repeatedly done that very thing over several years.

Two telephone calls and two emails today requesting comment from ADL’s Southeast Interim Regional Director Shelly Rose have gone unanswered. She’s aware of my calls. I asked for her directly, gave my name and affiliation, and after a pause on hold her assistant asked if it would be OK to “send you to voice mail”. Ms Rose did provide a copy of the press release below, after I queried the main organization in New York…

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I ran across a post from three years back, where physicist Luboš Motl from Pilsen, Czech Republic, takes on some misleading and errant statements from one of the global warming propagandists. (One of the better ones, I might add.)

Anyway, Dr. Motl is one of the truly big brains, Einstein level. He is a string theorist, the kind of guy who works with mathematics that scare even mathematics professors. A real life Sheldon Cooper.